Troubleshoot Office 2011 for Mac issues by completely uninstalling before you reinstall

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Support for Office for Mac 2011 ended on October 10, 2017. All of your Office for Mac 2011 apps will continue to function. However, you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks. Upgrade to a newer version of Office so you can stay up to date with all the latest features, patches, and security updates.

To do a complete uninstall of Office for Mac 2011, you can download and run this handy automated tool. This is for troubleshooting purposes only. To do a regular uninstall, see Uninstall Office for Mac.

You must be signed in as administrator. If you own your own personal Mac, you probably already are.

Note: If you're using a Mac that's part of a network at work, you might have to ask someone in your IT organization for help with signing in as administrator.

Make sure there's nothing in Trash that you want to keep.

There are several things to remove. This article steps you through each one.

Important: The location of certain files are different if you have Service Pack 2 (SP2) installed. To check if it is installed, open Word, and then click About Word from the Word menu. If the version number is 14.2.0 or above, you have Service Pack 2 and you should follow the Service Pack 2 steps when provided in this article.

Step 1: Remove the Microsoft Office 2011 folder

Click Go > Applications.

Drag the Microsoft Office 2011 folder to Trash.

Note: Removing preferences using the steps below will delete any customizations that were made. These customizations include changes to toolbars, custom dictionaries, and keyboard shortcuts that were created.

Step 2: Remove com.microsoft files from Library > Preferences

Hold down the OPTION key while you click Go.

Note: Why hold down the Option key? The Library folder is a hidden folder, this way you can display it.

Click Home and open Library.

Open Preferences and sort files and folders by alphabetical order.

Note: If you have Office 2016 for Mac installed on your computer, DO NOT remove the file com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist.

Drag all files that begin with "com.microsoft" to Trash.

Still in Preferences, open ByHost, and drag all files that begin with "com.microsoft" to Trash.

Before continuing, if you created custom templates that you want to keep, copy them to another folder.

Back in Library, open Application Support > Microsoft, and drag the Office folder to Trash.